The blog for the cult Manhattan cable-access TV show that offers viewers the best in "everything from high art to low trash... and back again!" Find links to rare footage, original reviews, and reflections on pop culture and arthouse cinema.

Friday, February 28, 2014

The recent death of
Harold Ramis brought back memories of his great work as both a
performer and head writer on the first season of SCTV.
His output as a movie director was wildly uneven (I’m being kind here).
I'm of the right age demographic to be hailing Ramis for, as the
writer of one insanely hyperbolic piece on Gawker contended, being
the man who “wrote and/or directed the greatest American movies of
my generation.”

That isn't the case,
though – Ramis's comedies are pleasant on first viewing (especially
if you're a teenager or younger), but there is little to no reason to
revisit them (Groundhog Day excepted), unless
you're looking for a trip down Memory Lane. It's true that Ramis
crafted the Bill Murray movie persona that everyone knows and loves,
but the films just don't stand up to repeated viewings.

Yes,
there's a line or two here, a situation there, but Meatballs,
Caddyshack, Stripes, and the Ghostbusters
duo (why is anyone at all, ever, even considering a third
installment?) ain't The Producers (the original, not the appalling musical revamp). Ramis' later films were
pure formula, from Analyze This and Analyze
That to the godawful remake of Bedazzled
(written by former Caesar writer Larry Gelbart!) to that goddamned
Jack Black caveman comedy (his last feature film).

A piece on time.com says that Ramis is responsible for the fact that modern vehicle
comedies include space for the performers to improvise – is that
so? The writer apparently neglected to remember that he scripted most
of the “influential” comedies and didn't direct them. Of the ones
he did direct, perhaps only Caddyshack adheres to
the Time writer's Platonic ideal of Ramis as the
Paul Sills of cinema.

So let's return to the
good stuff bearing Ramis's name, why don't we? As a young upstart,
fresh from the superbly nasty National Lampoon Radio
Hour, he was truly terrific on the first year of
SCTV. He wasn’t able to do perfect celebrity
impressions like his castmates — in fact he looked pretty much the
same in every sketch he was in. He did, however share their ability
to write and craft sublimely cartoonlike characters – as with the
perpetually sweating station manager Moe Green, guru “Swami
Banananda” aka Dennis Peterson, and “Officer Friendly.”

Sadly, the Shout!
Factory SCTV DVD releases never included the first
year of the show. At that point the series had a truly miniscule budget,
but the writing was wonderful, and the performer-writers were
discovering their strengths as satirists of TV.

The Shout! collections
unfortunately ended with the season many SCTV fans
would say was its absolute worst — the season that introduced Tony
Rosato, Robin Duke, and Rick Moranis. I assume that Shout! issued
this season (as SCTV — Best of the Early Years)
because of the inclusion of Moranis. In the meantime the early years
with and without Ramis are “MIA,” as is the odd final season that
aired on Cinemax.

Segments from the
show’s first season are available online, and I have chosen four
great bits featuring Ramis. The first reflects his National
Lampoon background — a grim little mock-PSA that features
the seven “warning signs” of death. The show’s odd,
intentionally weird laugh track was in full effect in the early days:

The second is an
equally grim bit starring Ramis as “Officer Friendly,” an abusive
cop who doubles as a kiddie show host.

Ramis' most notable
SCTV character was the always-nervous station
manager Moe Green. Here is the episode in which a wonderfully
ridiculous parody of Ben-Hur is bracketed by Moe
Green hosting “Dialing for Dollars”:

And the piece de
resistance, a truly bizarre bit of business called “Muley’s
Roundhouse.” This is a spinoff from a Grapes of Wrath
parody (“The Grapes of Mud”) that aired on the same episode.

Here a supporting character from Wrath, a
“tetched” neighbor of the Joad family (played by John Qualen in
John Ford’s 1940 film) is the host of a children's show. Qualen's
character is quirky, as seen here, but Ramis' interpretation
paints him as a blissfully cranky loon who dotes on words with the
letter “b” in 'em. This is Ramis at his best, and weirdest, as a
performer. [The character comes back after the "Three Dummies" short with Flaherty, Levy, and Candy; ignore the "host" of this vid, he's gone pretty quickly.]

Friday, February 14, 2014

Looking back at the pioneering comedy variety-show hosts of
the Fifties, it's easy to slot them into categories: the “Vaudeo” hosts (the
initial term for the variety show format – vaudeville + video), whose work is
very much of its time, including Milton Berle, Jimmy Durante, and Jackie
Gleason; the movie stars who moonlighted on TV (Martin and Lewis and their
fellows on The Colgate Comedy Hour); the innovators, who
were ahead of their time and much copied and admired by their colleagues,
including Steve Allen and Ernie Kovacs. And then there was Sid Caesar, perhaps
the most talented character comedian of them all.

The thing that is remarkable about Caesar – besides that
stunning writer's room that contained several of the most important comedy
writers and filmmakers of the following twenty years – was the fact that,
unlike Gleason, Sid didn't run his characters into the ground. In fact he only
did two with any regularity: the Professor and the “husband” character in
sitcom-esque sketches with Imogene Coca as a couple called the Hickenloopers
(this later appeared in Caesar’s Hour with Nanette Fabray).

Sid's overwhelming versatility and ability to mimic a wide
variety of ethnic voices, accents, and languages made him a truly unique
comedian – it's hard to think of anyone with that much range until the
generation of British comic actors (Guiness, Sellers) who would play several
leads in the same picture. Caesar operated on a much higher level of creativity
than Uncle Miltie or “The Great One” – there was indeed a skill and art that
went into his comedy, and as a result he was reportedly a very emotional
individual prone to crazy gestures (as in hanging the young Mel Brooks out a
window when he pissed Sid off one day).

Sid was like a supernova of energy that splashed all over
the Fifties, to the extent that he seemed to have exhausted his talent (more
accurately, exhausted himself) in the Sixties and Seventies. The title of his
autobiography reflected those years in which he was lost in addiction: “Where
Have I Been?” The best thing that happened to remind us all of just *how*
brilliant he had been was the release in 1973 of the wonderful compilation
movie Ten From Your Show of Shows.

That film remains the single best introduction to what Caesar
did in his prime: ethnic voices, exuberant and extremely-physical physical
comedy, playing the sole sane person in a world full of lunatics, and acting
out gorgeously detailed pantomime bits with the equally wonderful Imogene.

However, the release some years back of the VHS and DVD sets
of sketches from Your Show of Shows (1950-54) and
Caesar's Hour (1954-57) was another momentous occasion,
since we were able to hear from the individuals involved in the shows (all the
writers, Sid himself, costars Carl Reiner, Howard Morris, and Nanette Fabray)
just how extraordinary the writing process on Sid's shows was, as well as view
the full range of Caesar's talents in hours of his best sketches. Steve Allen
dubbed Caesar “TV's Chaplin,” and he was entirely right.

I full recommend those boxes and will be drawing from them
for forthcoming tributes to Sid on the Funhouse TV show. In the meantime I will
spotlight a few personal favorites from the items available online. There were
several different types of sketches that Sid and company did on his two Fifties
variety series. The first were music parodies. Here is a gorgeous bit of
free-form nonsense called “What Is Jazz?”:

And Sid, Carl, and Howie become “The Three Haircuts.” This
is a parody of hiccup-voiced singers like Johnny Ray and the general tenor of
rock lyrics (Sid and his writing staff were jazz, big-band and classical
people, what can I say?):

The second kind of sketch was the “interview.” Here Sid as
his professor character is interviewed by Reiner about how to get to sleep:

The third is possibly the most wonderful, since you’ll rarely
(if ever) see it on current-day comedy shows. It’s pantomime, done to a fine
turn by Sid and Imogene. I know that Gleason did pantomime too, but his often
ventured into the cloying and sentimental. Jerry Lewis performed various mime
bits to music that were terrific, but Sid and Imogene were the supreme
practitioners on TV.

Here they and Reiner and Morris do their classic “Swiss clock” bit that functions – well, like clockwork. And here is their
perfect routine in which they play two bored classical musicians passing time
between musical solos:

The various movie parodies that were done on Caesar’s shows
allowed him to show the full range of his comic acting, as well as his uncanny
ear for foreign accents and singular ability to make up nonsense language (that
sounded just like the real thing) on the spot. A uploader on YT called “Vintage Comedy Vault” has been uploading a number of things from the DVD boxes,
including some primo examples of the movie parodies.

One of the sadder items revealed in the “Sid Vid” VHS/DVD
releases, in which the writers and others reminisce in between the sketches, is
that the producers of Sid’s variety series were told by NBC to stop doing their
sublime foreign movie parodies as time went on because more TVs were being sold
in towns across America. The people in these “new” territories were not
familiar with foreign movies, so the network feared they wouldn’t “get” what
Sid and company were doing, and thus would tune out.

Thankfully we do have kinescopes of the movie parodies that
were done on Your Show of Shows, when the writers were unabashed
about doing humor based on foreign films and cultures. Here is a wonderful
French sketch called “Le Honore du Juelle”:

This sketch called “La Bicylcetta” has nothing to do with
“Bicycle Thieves” plot-wise, but the very fact that the Show of
Shows team saw fit to do an Italian sketch about a bicycle being
stolen meant they had seen the De Sica classic (these sketches are indeed funny
whether or not you’ve seen the original film, btw — that idea was lost on the
NBC heads).

And a beautifully detailed bit starring Sid and Howard
Morris called “The German general,” which definitely reflects Murnau’s
Last Laugh. This is silly, hysterical comedy that also has a
brain (and a superb source):

The fifth type of sketch was one in which an ensemble is
present and each new character that is introduced is crazier than the last.
There are two perfect examples of this, the very funny “At the Movies” sketch and what is arguably one of the funniest sketches to ever air on American
TV, a very broad and very brilliant spoof of the emotion-wrought series
This Is Your Life. This is in the very top rank of Caesar
sketches:

Sid was a consistently fine guest on other peoples’ variety
shows in the Sixties and Seventies, when he was often paired with other Fifties
icons like Berle (the two couldn’t have been further apart in terms of talent
and comic approach). Here he is doing his professor character on The
Dean Martin Show. Dean made a great straight man for Sid:

Much has been made of Caesar’s super-macho VHS workout tape
(done when he was over 65), but I would like to highlight the fact that
whenever Sid was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award (as I noted here, the Mark Twain Prize people overlooked him entirely), he would ask the organization
giving him the award to include Imogene, since he felt they had functioned so
well as a team back in the early Fifties (the two reunited in 1958 for the
short-lived Sid Caesar Invites You and did a short-lived
British TV series in the late Fifties).

Here is a mellow and beautifully detailed piece of
husband-and-wife pantomime the two did much later on (1977) on The
Tonight Show:

Perhaps the most intriguing rarity for those who love
comedy history is the full episode of The Admiral Broadway
Revue that is available online. It’s a revelation, since this is in
the very early days of TV, when “Vaudeo” was indeed the dominant style
(specialty acts, including Marge and Gower Champion, are all over this show).

The three credited writers are, oddly, Mel Tolkin, Lucille
Kallen, and producer Max Liebman (who I didn’t know had collaborated on the
writing of Sid’s shows). The Admiral Revue was only on
from January to June 1949 on both the NBC and Dumont networks. Admiral reportedly
pulled the show when it proved so popular they received more orders for TV
sets than they could possibly fulfill.

Sid did a bunch of his solo routines on the program, as with
this “Five Dollar Date”:

The episode, which is up in its entirety on YT, has only three
Sid segments and two with Imogene. They are:— As a harassed dad with an Irish brogue (Imogene is one of
his daughters), at 4:45

— As a Gorgeous George-style wrestler (17:30 in). Best line:
“I’m supposed to win tonight – take it easy!”

— Imogene does a comic East Indian dance number at 27:00

— Sid does a piece “in one” in which he plays the part of a
samba dancer dancing through the events of his life (37:30). Sid’s oddly
Yiddish Spanish patter here isn’t his most accurate language impression, but it
shows his ability to craft entire monologues in a fictitious language:

Caesar was the last of the Fifties TV icons to die, and he
was certainly one of the most talented. “TV’s Chaplin” indeed.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

When Joan Fontaine died recently, the discussion among movie buffs naturally
turned to the question “which Golden Age Hollywood stars are still
among us?” Shirley Temple’s name was rarely if ever brought up,
because she exited the business in 1950 (with a handful of “comeback”
projects, including a TV show in the late Fifties), and her career —
although massive at its height — didn’t last as long as those of
Olivia de Havilland, Kirk Douglas, and the never-gonna-quit Mickey
Rooney.

Still, Temple was the
biggest child star of all time in America (“adjusting for
inflation,” which makes the dimes spent going to the movies in the
Thirties equal to the 12-14 bucks shelled out today).

She started
attracting attention in the movies in the early Thirties, but her
string of vehicles from 1933-38 made her a major star (from the ages
of 5-10). She was a top box-office attraction from ’35-’38. The
oddest bit of trivia: at the height of her fame, Fox had a 19-person
team of writers at the ready to write Shirley’s vehicles (labeled
the “Shirley Temple development team”).

In the Forties she became a pleasant teen
performer, but the public wasn’t interested in seeing her star in
films anymore; she did have nice supporting turns in Ford’s
Fort Apache (1948) with her then-husband John Agar, and with
Cary Grant and Myrna Loy in The Bachelor and the
Bobby-Soxer (1947).

Her most notable film
from that era, for movie “mythology” reasons, is That
Hagen Girl (1947), a melodrama in which Shirley is believed
to be the daughter of a lawyer, played by ol’ Bonzo himself, Ronald
Reagan. The film ends with the two of them — father-figure and
daughter-figure — going off together as a romantic couple (in
real-life Temple was 19, Reagan was 36, so it’s not that unusual in
a H’wood pic, but I guess the fact that their relationship changed
so radically as the picture went on soured viewers and critics).

Temple liked the film,
but noted that Reagan didn’t, and that prints of it
seemed to “disappear” when he was president. The film came out of
“hiding” in the Nineties and is now available on YT in its
entirety:

Shirley distinguished
herself as a diplomat from the Nixon administration through that of
George H.W. Bush (she was a steadfast Republican throughout her adult
years) and made an important decision to publicly discuss her bout
with breast cancer in the early Seventies (she of course won, living
40 more years). She was that rarest of birds in Hollywood: a
well-adjusted child actor, whose adult life may not have been spent
in show business, but who made important contributions to society.

And then there’s
Graham Greene… One of the most interesting things from today's
perspective about the critical perception of Shirley Temple at the
time of her amazing stardom was a review that the Third
Man novelist wrote in October 1937 about the Temple vehicle Wee
Willie Winkie, directed by the mighty John Ford (who did what Fox told him to do) and based on a Kipling tale. At the time Shirley was
wowing Depression audiences with her moppet cuteness and chipper
attitude. Greene, however, saw something else in her stardom.

In Night and
Day magazine, he wrote of Temple: "Her admirers –
middle-aged men and clergymen – respond to her dubious coquetry, to
the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with
enormous vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and
dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire."

Greene was hit with a
civil libel suit by the producer of the movie and fled to Mexico to avoid being prosecuted for criminal libel (the magazine went out of
business). From January to May 1938 he stayed in Mexico writing
The Power and Glory and avoiding extradition for
the libel suit. Even forty years later he was not “allowed” to
have the piece about Temple appear in one of his collections of
articles.

The thing is, is that
Greene was right. There was an odd underside to Temple's amazing
success. It may not be as apparent in her squeaky-clean vehicle
pictures (although author Jeanine Basinger has noted that there were
weird Freudian symbols in those too), but the early series of shorts
that Temple made called “Baby Burlesks” were sleazy as all
get-out.

The premise is that
little kids were parodying the adult movie hits of the day – quite
like the “Dogville” series of shorts in which dogs acted out the
hits of the day! It's not as disturbing to see dressed-up dogs
pretending to be sexy and giving come-hither glances, a la Dietrich
and Mae West. It is a little bizarre for kids dressed up in giant
diapers to do it.

To strengthen Greene's
argument, one would need only producer the short below, which is
surprisingly deranged for its time (1933, still pre-Code!). Excuse
the crappy colorization (it seems that most of Temple's kiddie
vehicles were colorized in the Eighties). “Polly Tix in Washington”
is insane:

So now that I've proven
Our Man in Havana correct, I'll close out on a
much sleazy note with the scene that has my vote for one of the
silliest musical numbers of any Thirties musical (I'm not including
Busby Berkeley items in this, as those are too bizarrely weird and kinky, and possessed of a very singular genius, to be classified as simply “silly”).

It's the moment in
the 1938 Shirley Temple vehicle Little Miss Broadway
in which our heroine wants to convince a judge that her adoptive
father's show is a great one – so they stage a number from the
damned thing IN the courtroom! (Methinks Lars von Trier was a fan, or at least had seen this moment of sheer craziness.) Here it is, again badly colorized, but
you'll get the idea. RIP to the original “Little Miss Sunshine.”

Saturday, February 8, 2014

After I wrote the two-part piece below, there was an explosion of media activity, not just from those
who wanted to impart their personal opinion on the sexual abuse
charge, but from parties who were friends with Woody and Mia, and
finally Dylan and Woody themselves.

In the interests of
posterity, I will list the most salient links below, as I already
went through my opinions on the case in the two parts of this blog
entry. Although my research was duplicated (or borrowed?) for the
first link below, I'm very proud that mine has seemingly been the only piece to
explore both Woody and Mia's on-screen personas and how they related
to public perception of the case.

Weide does use several
of the same URLs I did to make his point, but he also supplies
information he gleaned in the making of his documentary about Allen.
He also made two interesting decisions that I had veered away from in
writing the piece below. He chose to use Dylan's new name (Malone),
which is a fact that's instantly retrievable from Google, but which
Maureen Orth indicated as a kind of “family secret” (a not very
well hidden one).

He also included a fact
I left out of my piece, since I thought it swerved the reader's
attention well away from the Woody/Mia relationship – namely, the
fact that Mia's brother was a convicted sex offender.

The victim herself,
Dylan, then decided to come forward and write an open letter to the public about her sex abuse. The New York Times
columnist Nicholas Kristof printed her letter, along with a prologue
noting that he is indeed a friend of the Farrow family. This piece
was interesting in that it was the only lengthy adult reflection on
the case by Dylan (should we just call her Malone now?) that wasn't
penned by Maureen Orth and includes a picture of her along with the
article. (The picture at right is from her Twitter account, easily found on Google.)

In the wake of these
two statements from people “inside” the case, the press bloggers
came out with their knives for the other side. I will only link to
two of these, because they seemed to be most eloquent about their
beliefs. Firstly, Michael Wolff on The Guardian
site wrote a piece about the case that was pro-Allen, “Media Spin for the Farrow Family?”

And then Jessica Winter
wrote a two-part piece on the case, taking Dylan and Mia's side,
trying to focus attention on what she saw as the dubiousness of
Weide's statements about the early Nineties custody case. Winter actually provides a more reasoned argument than anything penned by Maureen Orth in VF.

Then another “insider”
stepped into the public spotlight on February 5th to talk about the
case from his own personal knowledge of the family. Moses, the third
and oldest of Woody and Mia's children (he was adopted, but was
indeed adopted by both of them as a couple), decided to talk to People magazine; he sided with his father and
accused his mother of completely manipulating and fabricating the sex
abuse charge.

Dylan then decided to do an interview with People, which appeared on
Feb. 6, to rebut Moses' claims. The two most interesting things here
were, again, a picture of the grown-up Dylan/Malone (Picture credit:
“Courtesy Mia Farrow”) and that she uses the phrase “my cross
to bear.”

It's been noted that
Mia returned to Catholicism after Woody took up with Soon-Yi. As an
ex-(ex-ex-ex-)Catholic myself I will simply note that suffering is
redemptive in the Catholic faith – it is in fact (in one of the
faith's more horrifying teachings) a good thing. The more you suffer,
the more secure is your place in Heaven and the more you are loved by
the supposed deity.

Dylan clearly feels
that she is a martyr, but then oddly adds that she needed to speak up
about her abuse not because of herself but because of her family.
“But I will not see my family dragged down like this. I can't stay
silent when my family needs me.” Thus, she felt she needed to speak
out again, because of the attack on her family by her estranged
brother Moses (who works as a family counselor and stated that Mia
used to hit her kids when she was angry at them).

Clearly Dylan is a very
damaged young woman. I find it fascinating, though, that she places
her family (which would clearly be Mia, since she was the focus of
Moses' statements) above herself.

In doing this he
harkens back to a bunch of the issues I mentioned in my piece, in addition
to adding two things I didn't have time or space to include: that he
took a lie detector test and Farrow refused to; and that he is a
claustrophobe, who couldn't have remained in the attic where he was
accused of sexually abusing Dylan. He also talks about the fact that
adoption agencies allowed him and Soon-Yi to adopt two children,
conducting thorough investigations into his background in the
process.

Most interestingly, he
notes that the actress Stacey Nelkin has come forward to say that Mia
wanted her to testify against him in the custody case saying she was
underaged when Woody dated her, which Woody says is untrue. But
wasn't that Nelkin's declaration from the beginning, in saying that
she was the source for the Mariel Hemingway character in
Manhattan?

He addresses the
side-issues, including Mia's statement that she was “involved”
with Sinatra while dating Woody, and that he is indeed the father of
Satchel/Ronan. Woody's take on the matter is “Again I want to call
attention to the integrity and honesty of a person who conducts
herself like that.”

Allen states his
sympathy for Dylan and declares that he hopes there will be a
rapprochement in the future with his daughter. Most laudably,
considering that this affair has now been debated ENDLESSLY in the
“court of public opinion” that is the Internet, he concludes in a
parenthetical note: “This piece will be my final word on this
entire matter and no one will be responding on my behalf to any
further comments on it by any party. Enough people have been hurt.”

But I want to give the final word to Mia in this instance. As I researched this piece, I found an amazing interview with Farrow that has surprisingly not been quoted yet in the see-saw, ping-pong media coverage. In a June 2, 2006 interview for The Independent, Mia claimed she could FORGIVE Woody: Asked whether she has since forgiven Allen, she says: "In an instant. I
can't carry any of that. That's too heavy for me. It really isn't up to
me to forgive or not forgive, is it?" Remarkably, in such a small city
as Manhattan, Farrow says that she hasn't once run into Allen - or his
bride - since their rancorous split. "It's incredible, I know. But I've
had the good fortune and that has never happened to me. No, thank God."

Asked about whether she'd like to reconcile with Soon-Yi, as she had stated in the years between '92 and '06, she says, "Well, I've got over it, you know. You
can get over almost anything. You just can't go on mourning forever,
and so I've moved on. It's been a long time now. And I really don't
think of her as my daughter any more. I can't. She isn't. She's
estranged - and strange."

Considering her recent outcries, that quote about forgiveness from 2006 ("In an instant") is rather startling.

Hopefully there won't
be more about this matter in the press (although I know the Internet
will continue to debate it for DECADES to come, as with the matter of
the girl in the Polanski case, who has virtually pleaded with the press and
public to move on, but whose wishes were countermanded by those who
believe they know better than the victim). It would be best for
everyone (critics and “avengers” of both sides) to let this be
worked out in private, by those actually involved in the case.

Monday, February 3, 2014

The phrase “great
American” is used to distraction (or more accurately, misused) by a
current-day conservative talk host (the one that John Cleese reminded
us is “plump as a manatee”). In his usage, the phrase means
nothing – it just means you agree with him. My idea of a great
American is that old folkie who died a few days back after sharing
his music with the world for over three quarters of a century (he
died at 94 but had begun performing in the Thirties).

Pete Seeger was
blacklisted in show business for quite a while, but never bailed from
this country (who would have blamed him if he had?). He had a great
enthusiasm for musical history and, in going through the list of his
hit songs, one finds that not only was he one of the first great
advocates of what is now called “world music,” but that he also
continued to shine a spotlight on American history (usually the
underside of our history) by keeping old folk songs alive.

He kept it simple,
simple to a fault. He breezed past the winds of fashion and went in
and out of style. There were moments when songs he had written were
in the Top 40, and he surely was making a good deal of money from the
publishing rights – he also was a member of the quartet that
qualified as the first “crossover” folk act to hit the pop
charts, the model for the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul & Mary, and
every other folk duo or trio that hit in the “folk boom” of the
early Sixties. Seeger's group was, of course, the Weavers.

Here is a beautiful
collection of what they called “Snader Telescriptions,”short
films made in 1951 showing the Weavers at the height of their powers
and celebrity. These were little “soundies” made for TV that show
them singing, among others the catchy-as-hell Israeli song “Tzena
Tzena,” “So Long (it’s been good to know yuh),” and their big
hit,”Goodnight Irene”:

It was Seeger's love of
this country, though, that always came to the fore. He involved
himself with many causes, from union struggles in the Forties right
through to the “Occupy” movement.

His belief that a better
America could be obtained through protest – and, of course, through
music – was most likely the thing that kept his heart beating until
the age of 94. (And most likely the recent passing of his wife Toshi
– the two were married for just under 70 years – was one of the
things that let Father Time catch up with him.)

Like most people of a
“certain age,” I grew up seeing Pete on TV, performing both
simple numbers for kids and incredibly serious and moving old folk
tunes. What remained impressive about him was the fact that he truly
didn't care about fashion – in a literal sense (except for his
conductor caps or the occasional nice pullover, Pete was never a
“natty” guy) and in the metaphorical one as well.

At a certain point his
music was deemed too “corny” and his singalongs were the stuff of
stupid jokes – yes, Pete could certainly croon several verses of
“Kumbaya” and “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,” both of which
became punchlines for jokes about folk music and “brotherhood.”
He didn't care, though – he loved classic folk songs and clearly
*believed* in them as well. He could be an incredibly laidback
performer (and certainly became more so as he got older), but he was
always incredibly sincere.

The other thing that
kept knocking me out as I delved into the trove of Seeger video
material that is available online is that every third or fourth song
I came across was one that I knew but didn't know the title of. Pete
was the master at rediscovering older tunes that had incredible,
fucking unforgettable hooks (thus the pop success of “The Lion
Sleeps Tonight,” taken from “Wimoweh,” Seeger's version of an
African folk song).

Pete had a heritage of
music and social activism in his family. His dad was a musicologist
who specialized in ethnomusicology and his mother was a concert
violinist and teacher at Julliard. Pete was not from a poor family –
he was sent to a boarding school and did indeed make it into Harvard,
which he quit after realizing he really loved folk music (and radical
politics, having joined the Young Communist League).

Here's a short clip
from a filmed interview he did, where he talks about his interest in
folk music:

The people he worked
with in the Thirties and Forties are now the stuff of legend: Lead
Belly, Burl Ives, Will Geer, Funhouse favorite Nicholas Ray, and the
man he traveled the country with, the immortal Woody Guthrie. Seeger
was already a “grand old man” of folk by the Sixties because he
had known all of these legends who were long gone by the time of the
folk boom (or, in the case of Woody, unable to perform any longer).

He first courted
controversy as a member of the Almanac Singers, a loose-knit group of
folkies whose first line-up included Pete, his pal Woody Guthrie,
screenwriter Millard Lampell, and Lee Hays (later of the Weavers).
Their first album (consisting of three 78s) was called “Songs for
John Doe” and was released in 1941 well before Pearl Harbor.

This last fact is
important because the album stressed an anti-interventionist message
about the ongoing war in Europe. The sentiment behind this position
was that U.S. corporations were beating the drums for intervention.
Here's the lead track, “The Strange Death of John Doe”:

This isolationist
message of course fell out of favor quickly as 1941 came to a close.
The Almanac Singers toured all over America and even recorded an
album of songs called “Dear Mr. President” that praised America's
role in the war. In the meantime the group sang other types of tunes
(including sea shanties) and on other topics (including the Spanish
Civil War and, most importantly, the union movement).

But the isolationist
material they recorded on the “John Doe” album brought them to
the attention of the FBI and the right-wing press, which branded them
“commies” (they were, of course) whose music was “dangerous.”
This, mind you, while the war was raging overseas – thus, Pete and
his friends were tarred and feathered in the press by right-wingers
even before the HUAC existed.

Here's an interesting
ditty the Almanac Singers performed called “The Dodger Song”. The group also performed classic folk material like the song
“Liza Jane,” but the one song from that period that Pete
kept in his repertoire for years to come was this item (recently
redone by the Dropkick Murphys and Ani DeFranco – separately).

Pete served in the Army
during WWII in a performing unit. After the war he began his solo
performing career, which didn't last very long (in this era), because
by 1949 he was part of the Weavers. The group's repertoire was indeed
sublime – they chose to sing American folk classics, great new
tunes by folks like Lead Belly and Guthrie, their own new tunes
(including Pete's “If I Had a Hammer”), and songs from around
in the world in English translation.

Their records were
selling, they were a popular touring act, but the appearance of
Pete's name in the infamous publication “Red Channels” meant the
group was now under surveillance by the FBI and Seeger was
blacklisted from appearances on TV and radio.

Pete did go up before
the HUAC in 1955 and made news by not “taking the Fifth.” Instead
he evoked the First Amendment and indicated that his decisions and
beliefs were private. He was held in “contempt of Congress,” was
indicted in '57, and wasn't cleared of the charge until '62.

What was most
interesting, given the “underground” and then crossover appeal of
folk music in the late Fifties, was that the Weavers did reunite in
1955 to play Carnegie Hall, and sold the place out. As a result they
stayed together for the next few years, until Seeger quit the group
because he objected to their doing a commercial for cigarettes.

He continued to reunite
with them over the years, the most poignant occasion being when Lee
Hays was ailing and the group once again played Carnegie Hall,
certain this was the last performance of the original quartet. The
performance is chronicled in the documentary The Weavers:
Wasn't That a Time! (1982). Here is the final song from the
show, the group's biggest-ever hit, “Goodnight Irene”:

****

The maker of the
terrific PBS documentary about Pete, Pete Seeger: The Power
of Song has uploaded some of Pete's home movies, made with
a sound camera in the mid-Fifties. Here is a great clip of him in
1955 giving a little crash course in how to play the banjo:

And an equally
interesting lesson in “How to Make a Steel Drum”:

These home movies tie
in to what Pete did to make a living during the time he was
blacklisted: he toured the college circuit doing concerts and also
taught music in schools and summer camps.*****

In researching this
piece I was reminded of how important a “curator” of this music
Seeger was. At the time in the Sixties when his songs were hits for
other artists, he undertook one of his most interesting experiments
in the media, a weekly show called “Rainbow Quest,” that was shot
at and aired on an NYC/NJ UHF station, WNJU (Ch. 47, whose
programming was primarily Spanish-language).

He only did the show
from 1965-66 (he funded it himself with coproducer Sholom Rubinstein),
and there were only 39 episodes, but the result is a timeless piece
of musical history. 12 of the shows were released on either DVD or
VHS (some on both media), and currently a number of complete episodes
and wonderful clips are available online.

The uploader named “d3singh” has put up complete episodes, and every one of the
shows is a gem. Pete made sure to represent different types of folk
music on the program, and so the viewer gets a musical education, as
well as being entertained by some truly kick-ass musicians. The first
episode finds Pete musing on being a TV host (this is, remember, when
he was still banned from mainstream TV).

He talks about it here
at 5:00, before inviting on his guests the Clancy Brothers and Tommy
Makem, and Tom Paxton:

The Rainbow
Quest clips available online include some terrific
performances. Among them are Malvina Reynolds (who cowrote the
classic “Little Boxes” with Pete) performing her song “Turn Around,” which is a number that I haven't heard in many
years, but which used to appear on TV quite a lot (as noted, these
songs are burnt into all of our minds and hearts from many years
ago).

Seeger took care to
bring on living legends, but he also brought on the new talents of
the Sixties, including Donovan (who guested with an Irish friend who
played sitar and blues icon Rev. Gary Davis):

Buffy Sainte-Marie and
Pete did a cover of “Cindy,” which I've spoken about on this blog
in relation to Dolores Fuller and Howard Hawks:

The most memorable
episode from the series is the one that feature Johnny Cash and June
Carter. Johnny is clearly on some drug, but he's very eloquent and
sings very well. Again, it's fascinating to see these iconic figures
interacting with each other:

****

Rainbow
Quest was a local production that was meant to be
syndicated around the country, but independently – I'm most curious
what kind of commercials aired in the ad-breaks on WNJU, seeing that
the station was predominantly a Spanish-language station. Seeger
made his first network TV appearance in a decade and a half when he
guested on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

His song “Waist Deep
in the Big Muddy” just cut too close to the bone for America at the
time, so CBS edited out the song from the September '67 show on which he
sang it (he was still included in the final edit otherwise). Tom
Smothers brought the case to the “court of public opinion” by
getting the press to cover the act of censorship, and so CBS allowed
the song to air on a January 1968 show on which Seeger returned as a
guest.

After Vietnam and the
civil rights movement, Seeger chose to “think globally, act
locally” by campaigning for the clean up of the Hudson River. After
the bigger struggles he had faced from the Forties through the Sixties,
his turn to environmentalism might be seen as a “simpler” task,
but it was totally in keeping with his interest in the world around
him. He sang plenty of songs about the river and the environment, but
the one that burned itself into my brain was this modest children's
tune:

Pete did weigh in on
the other battles of the Seventies. Here he does a number by his
sister Peggy that reflected the women's liberation movement of that
period. Doing these numbers Pete could indeed be looked upon as
corny, but the guy was so charming and earnest, he brought the
numbers to life beautifully:

Seeger was incredibly
generous to younger performers whose work he admired. I doubt Joni
Mitchell would've wanted anyone else adding to her work, but when it
came to Pete, she was clearly flattered that he decided to write an
extra verse to “Both Sides Now.” (Pete's verse is clearly from
the point of view of a parent, so it briefly turns the song into
“Father and Son” by Cat Stevens.)

The whole concert
featuring Joni and Pete was available as of a few days ago, but has
been now been taken off of YT. Here is their duet on “Both
Sides Now”:

The one artist Pete was
most closely allied with in the last few decades was his friend
Woody's son Arlo (you can read about Springsteen's tribute to Seeger everywhere online, so I'm going to skip over that collaboration). Pete and Arlo worked perfectly together, with Arlo supplying
the lighter side and Pete getting the crowd alive and singing. Here
they are in 1993 (Pete is a mere stripling of 74), doing Seeger's big
hit “If I Had a Hammer”:

One younger performer
who admired Pete and wrote a wonderful tribute song about him was
Harry Chapin. Harry acknowledges the fact that Seeger was derided in
some quarters, but beautifully conveys the importance of the man as a
conscience for our country:

****

The only way to really
close out this piece is with Pete's own wry take on aging – at
points it seemed like he had left his sense of humor behind, but this
tune proves it was always lurking somewhere in the background.

One of the most moving
clips related to Pete on YouTube is a record of an event that took
place in April 2012 in a town square in Oslo, where 40,000 people
gathered to sing the Seeger song “My Rainbow Race.”

A right-wing
terrorist who was on trial at the time for terrorist acts (which he
confessed to having committed, stating they were “atrocious but
necessary”) had cited the song as an example of “cultural
Marxism” and multiculturalism that was used to “brainwash”
Norwegian children. The man leading the
crowd in song is Norwegian singer Lillebjorn Nilsen, who had a big
hit with the Norwegian version of the song.

I know that Pete played
in front of thousands of people at many of the historic concerts and
folk festivals he performed at, but there's something especially
moving about one of his latter-day anthems being sung by tens of
thousands of people in a foreign language in a country he was never
identified with. (Pete's original version of the song can be found
here.)

Seeger always said that
for him the happiest moments at his concerts were hearing the voices
of audience members singing along. Now that he's gone we'll just have
to keep singing for the “old folkie.” He certainly spent enough
time teaching us how.